Former CIA official Michael F. Walker on why the Afghan army must win some battles
I remember walking down a side street in central Kabul in 1983 when I was approached by two young Afghan soldiers of the Soviet-trained Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) army. They thought I was an off-duty Soviet officer and greeted me warmly in Russian. I responded in Dari that I was American, not Russian, but I am not sure they believed me. They laughed and shouted, “America no good, Islam no good,” and they spat on the ground. Smiling, they added proudly, “We are communists.”
At the time, the Soviets were still winning their war in Afghanistan, but the U.S.-backed mujaheddin insurgency was gaining ground. During my years there, between 1983 and 1985, the insurgents shelled Kabul indiscriminately almost every evening; bombings, gunbattles and assassinations were common, and fierce battles raged in contested areas on the outskirts of the city. Throughout Afghanistan, Soviet forces routinely pummeled villages whose inhabitants were suspected of supporting the mujaheddin. (Civilian casualties were never a major concern for the Soviets.)
But in spite of the vicious fighting and the atrocities committed by both sides, thousands of young Afghan men renounced Islam, became communists and joined the DRA army to fight the insurgency. Whether they were true believers in Marxism-Leninism is far from clear, but they were happy to be on the winning side — with a monthly salary, free mess hall food, new uniforms and an issued rifle. In their decade-long war, the Soviets rotated more than 115,000 troops in and out of Afghanistan each year, and spent billions of rubles training the DRA army and launching extensive nation-building efforts.
Today, the soldiers of the U.S.-led International Assistance Security Force (ISAF) are in their 10th year of combat in Afghanistan. Much as the Soviets did, the ISAF has devoted enormous resources to training local forces, and it is pinning its hopes of scaling back its presence in the country on the ability of the ISAF-trained Afghan National Army (ANA) to eventually assume responsibility for security.
After the Soviet army retreated back across the Amu Darya in 1989, many DRA communist soldiers who had fought against their mujaheddin brothers fled the country, too. Many others discarded their DRA army uniforms and returned to their villages with their Soviet-supplied weapons to swear allegiance to their traditional warlords. Still others reembraced Islam, and some joined the Taliban insurgency a few years later when the Taliban began winning the civil war.
And some of these former soldiers are now wearing the uniform of the ISAF-trained Afghan National Army.
In early 2002, I was again in Kabul and again found myself talking to young Afghan soldiers, this time members of the ANA. Just months before, in November 2001, U.S.-backed Northern Alliance fighters swept across the Shomali Plain into Kabul, driving out the last remnants of the Taliban regime and forcing its al-Qaeda allies to flee across the border into Pakistan. The soldiers I spoke with seemed proud and cocky. They were carrying new weapons, earning a monthly salary and eating free mess hall food. They saw hope for their future and gave me the thumbs up sign, saying in English: “America very good, Taliban no good, Osama bin Laden no good, too.” They were on the winning side, and they loved the United States.
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